Search Results: Hoboes from Lorne Bair Rare Books

Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1930. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (19.75cm); green cloth, with titles stamped in dark blue on spine and front cover; orange topstain; dustjacket; [12], 300pp. With a brief, 1-page autographed letter, signed, on Hotel Algonquin (New York) stationary folded twice and tipped onto front endpaper: "To Margaret K. Forey / My greetings across the miles / Her friend / Jim Tully." Decorative bookplate of Margaret Keller Forrey to front pastedown, hint of sunning to spine, with some minor wear to extremities and two small, faint stains; Very Good+ or better. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $2.00), lightly shelfworn and dusty, with w few small nicks, short tears, and attendant creases to extremities; Very Good+. The author's seventh book. "At the height of his literary celebrity, Tully headed to Europe for the first time, paying a visit to his family's native Ireland and also making the rounds in Glasgow, London and Paris, leveraging his fame into personal… Read More

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (20.5cm); blue cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; 300pp. Small, vintage booksellers ticket to lower rear pastedown, with some offsetting to same from binders glue, else Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $2.50), spine-sunned and edgeworn, with several small nicks to spine ends and corners, and toning to rear panel and flap folds; front flap fold tender, with some separation; Very Good only. Tully's final novel, a nostalgic look at his family, upbringing, and Ohio roots, as well as a young boy's life on the road. "Biddy Brogan, the son of Irish immigrant parents, grows up the hard way. From an Ohio orphanage where he receives what formal education he is to acquire, he goes at age twelve to live in Chicago with an older sister, Virginia. Unable to come to terms with life in Chicago, Biddy takes to the road, doing migrant farm work in Wyoming; prize fighting in Arizona, Mexico, and California; and… Read More

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (20.5cm); blue cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; 300pp. Hint of sunning to spine, with rubber-stamped 'C' on rear pastedown; very Near Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped, spine-sunned, with light edgewear and a few tiny nicks at the crown; Very Good+. Tully's final novel, a nostalgic look at his family, upbringing, and Ohio roots, as well as a young boy's life on the road. "Biddy Brogan, the son of Irish immigrant parents, grows up the hard way. From an Ohio orphanage where he receives what formal education he is to acquire, he goes at age twelve to live in Chicago with an older sister, Virginia. Unable to come to terms with life in Chicago, Biddy takes to the road, doing migrant farm work in Wyoming; prize fighting in Arizona, Mexico, and California; and writing for a newspaper in Ohio. After each stint, he returns to his sister's comfortable world, until he finally settles down to a life of writing"… Read More

New York: Coward-McCann, Inc, 1931. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (20.75cm); green cloth, with titling and decorations stamped in red and yellow on spine and front cover; red topstain; 350, [2]pp. Spine gently sunned, boards slightly shelfworn, with a few faint stains and scuffs to front cover; Very Good+. "The final installment in what Tully considered his five-volume autobiographical cycle (following Beggars of Life, Circus Parade, Shanty Irish and Shadows of Men), this book essentially picked up where Shanty Irish had left off, following the passage of young Jim from a Cincinnati orphanage through his time on the road (and in the boxing ring), to the moment when he resolves to "write or starve" (PROUTY 8).

Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc, 1927. Reprint. Octavo (20.75cm); dark red cloth, with titling and decorations stamped in yellow on spine and front cover; pictorial endpapers; yellow topstain; dustjacket; [viii],280pp; illus. Slight forward lean, spine ends gently nudged, with a handful of small stains to right edge of textblock; Very Good+. Dustjacket is edgeworn, spine-sunned, with a few small chips at spine ends, several short tears and attendant creases; Very Good. "Despite its cheery-sounding title, Circus Parade is light years away from Toby Tylerland, presenting a dark, violent and thoroughly unromanticized portrait of life on the road with a traveling show -- described by Tully as "generally a canvas nest of petty thieves and criminals among the lower gentry." The book's depictions of casual brutality -- including a shocking account of the troupe's exploitation of a young black girl's sexual favors -- got it banned in Boston and caused an uproar with circus fans (and,… Read More

New York: Fortuny's, 1941. First Edition. Small octavo (20cm). Red cloth boards; dustjacket; 205pp. Small adhesive label to front free endpaper; faint scratches to foredge of text block, else a tight, straight copy in the original dustwrapper. Jacket is complete but worn; price-clipped, with closed tears at front flap-fold and shallow losses at head and heel of spine panel (not approaching jacket text). A Very Good copy. Somewhat uncommon proletarian hobo novel, set on Seattle's skid row, by a Seattle author. In the words of one contemporary reviewer: "The Dissenters is as poorly written as it is poorly edited, and that is saying a lot...but through all this there does come, astonishingly, an interesting recapitulation of thirty years of recent American history as seen from the Seattle Skidway...and [of] the Skidway socialism which is the thesis of the book..." (Joseph B. Harrison, "The Dissenters" [book review]. Pacific Northwest Quarterly vol. 33 no 1 (Jan. 1942). Somewhat scarce in dustwrapper.… Read More

New York: Macmillan, 1916. First Edition. First printing. 12mo. Ribbed maroon cloth, titles stamped in gilt on spine and front cover; xii,[1]-205pp + 4pp publisher's ads. Base of spine just a trifle pushed, else a tight, Fine copy in the original cloth.

St. Louis: Cosmos Publishing Co, 1903. First Edition. Octavo. Publisher's pictorial red cloth, stamped in white on spine and front cover; 169pp. Spine faded, with spine lettering nearly entirely flaked away; else a tight, Very Good copy with no markings and no significant wear. A lively, if slightly sophomoric, picaresque romance of two young men who hit the boxcars in pursuit of gold and adventure. Along the way they support themselves by begging and working odd jobs. Though of dubious authenticity -- one gets the impression that the author learned everything he knew about hoboes from the penny dreadfuls -- the romance of tramping comes through loud and clear, and the style is vigorous. With 4 rather crudely-drawn plates by G. Pearse Ennis. Scarce; OCLC gives just 7 locations; not in Hanna. SMITH S-1127.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914. First Edition. First printing. 12mo (18.5cm). Publisher's red cloth boards, lettered in black on spine and front cover; 349pp; illus. This copy with a 3-pp holograph letter from Henry H. Knibbs laid onto front pastedown. Copy of American journalist David G. Baillie (recipient of the letter), inscribed by him to his son Hugh on front free endpaper, dated Christmas, 1920. Tight, Very Good copy with mild fading to spine. First page of letter is laid down to front pastedown; second page is loosely laid in. An early, anonymously-published work by the prolific California author, best-known for his work in the genre of Western fiction. The title character, "Overland Red," is described on the "Buddies in the Saddle" website as a "former sheriff of Abilene, now an itinerant (hobo) on the run from the law in Barstow, where he's mistakenly believed to have killed a man. Living rough, he has his wits and plenty of grit to keep him going" (see: buddiesinthesaddle.blogspot). The… Read More

New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (21.25cm); blue-grey cloth, with pictorial title labels mounted to spine and front cover; dustjacket; xiv,178pp, with color pictorial frontispiece and 10 inserted black & white plates of illustrations by the author. Gentle sunning to spine and extremities, some light pencil underlining in text, and some offsetting to p.1; Very Good. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $2.50), gently sunned at spine and panels, showing moderate wear, some shallow losses, several tears, and long splits to front flap fold and rear joint; Good to Very Good. Real-life account of the author's six years spent at a county almshouse. With a foreword by Theodore Dreiser. MCDONALD, p.79.

New York: Modern Age Books, 1938. First edition. Octavo. Printed wrappers w/ pictorial dustjacket; 152p; illus. A clean, tight copy in the uncommon pictorial jacket, lightly rubbed and worn but still quite presentable. Extensively illustrated with halftones, uncredited but clearly of WPA/FSA lineage. An explication and defense of federal work-relief programs, written at the height of the Depression by the famous hobo sociologist Nels Anderson (who also wrote under the pseudonym "Dean Stiff").

New York: Viking Press, 1984. First Edition. Octavo (9-1/4" x 6-1/4"). Cloth-backed boards; dustjacket; 274p. Clean, tight copy, about Fine, in very clean jacket, unclipped and just a touch rubbed at spine ends; Near Fine. Conover's first book, begun as a Master's thesis in anthropology. A classic of participatory journalism, and an important entry in the literature of modern vagabondia. Also the book that launched many thousands of college-age faux-bos on their careers.

Toronto: William Briggs, 1904. First Edition. Small octavo (19.5cm.); publisher's green decorative cloth embossed in white and gilt, top edge gilt; 132pp.; photographic frontispiece. Light shelf wear, contemporary gift inscription to front free endpaper effaced, else Near Fine. Collection of seven short stories by the Canadian author, many involving the titular St. John River in New Brunswick: in one story a man buries his deceased lover in the river; in another, a tramp is mistakenly sentenced to death by his father. (Story descriptions provided by our colleague Garrett Scott, Bookseller.).

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Publisher's deep red ribbed cloth, titled in gilt on spine; xvii+278pp; 3pp ads. Bit of sunning and wear to cloth backstrip, slight soil to upper edge of text block, else a tight, VG or better copy. Small bookseller label (W.B. Clarke, Boston) at base of front pastedown. Collects seven of London's radical essays, most of which were originallly published in the International Socialist Review, including "The Tramp" and "How I Became A Socialist." BAL 11885. WOODBRIDGE 33.